Writings from 2019

With the Tory landslide, Brexit is bound to finally happen. Therefore what matters is making it as good, or as least bad as possible.

The argument is finally settled; it will be pretty pointless to recriminate, completely pointless to try to pretend we can still Remain in the EU and (for the foreseeable future) both dangerous and pointless to fantasise about rejoining it. We need to get used to the UK ‘going its own way’ for a long time to come.

There is no use in hiding from the bitter truth. As I’ll explain, the decisive Conservative victory means the Green Party must reassess its demands and aspirations, and make significant changes in the face of our new, darker post-election reality.

On November 14th, the New York Times published an article which discussed the Green New Deal as proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders, claiming to speak for ‘experts,’ and framing the article around what readers were led to believe were authoritative opinions. As Common Dreams

It often feels like the media have given us wall-to-wall coverage of every single aspect of Brexit. But there is a key issue which has hardly been mentioned: the Trade Bill.

The Trade Bill governs arrangements for future trade deals: with the EU, USA, Japan, India, or wherever. The next big argument after Brexit itself will be around the Government’s efforts to get a trade deal with Donald Trump. Whatever is in the law on trade agreements at that point is going to be crucial.

The Supreme Court’s definitive demolition of the PM’s illegal prorogation of Parliament means that Parliament will now return with immediate effect. If Boris Johnson does not do the decent thing and resign with immediate effect, then it is likely that Parliament, whose sovereignty the Supreme Court have affirmed, will look for a way of getting rid of him.

The Amazon rainforest is burning. Brazil has had more than 72,000 fire outbreaks so far this year, an 84 per cent increase on the same period in 2018, according to the country’s National Institute for Space Research.

Why is this happening? It is happening because people are systematically setting fires in the forest. This unimaginable, absurd, ecocidal action is probably the crime of the century so far. It could be terminal for human civilisation.